Enhancement Shaman Beginner's PvP Guide

[SIZE="6"]Enhance Beginners Guide Season 15 [SIZE]

*This guide was made per the request of Fluxa, Skillcapped Member.

*Any information that is incorrect or that you may find argument with please discuss below, only through active discussion can we find what is best =), as well I do not claim that to be an official source of knowledge on enhance, but would like to provide what I know and what has helped me achieve 2200 as an enhancement shaman in Arena.

Expertise (3%+) The Expertise soft cap of 3% (1020 Rating) will eliminate your attacks from being dodged or parried by caster specs/classes. To check your Expertise, open your character panel and then look under the Melee tab for "Expertise" and make sure it is at or just above 3% for your weapon(s). Expertise beyond 3% continues to reduce the chance for your attacks to be dodged or parried, but this amount of Expertise comes at the cost of other stats.

Melee Hit (3%) The Hit cap of 3% (1020 Rating) will eliminate the chance for any special ability to miss against other players. To check your Hit, open your character panel and then look under the Melee tab for "Hit Chance" and make sure it is at or just above 3% for your weapon(s).

PvP Power Increases all damage done to players and their pets or minions, and increases healing done in PvP zones. As of 5.1 PvP power does not increase healing done by hybrid classes, including Enhancement Shaman.

PvP Resilience Provides damage reduction against all damage done by players and their pets or minions. You start with a base PvP Resilience of 40%. PvP Resilience is more effective than raw Stamina for mitigating damage received in PvP environments. The choice of how much PvP Resilience to stack entirely depends on how much damage you want to mitigate versus how much damage you would like to deal to your targets. If you find yourself dying too frequently, try adding more PvP Resilience.

Haste Increases attack speed, reduces the casting time of spells, and lowers the GCD. More frequent melee attacks help to improve the uptime on Windfury Weapon.

Crit Increases the chance for your attacks to critically hit for 200% damage. More frequent crits help increase the uptime on Flurry.

Each of these methods are viable, and each can achieve roughly the same thing, and that is simply higher damage and utility from your "white strikes" or auto attack's. Method 1 is meant to guarantee more of your auto and special attacks aren't parried or dodged, therefore; meaning more maelstrom procs from more autoattacks hitting and more autoattack crits turning into more constant damage. Mouthful, I know.
The second method wants to achieve the same thing, but does it in increasing the rate at which you are attacking, as well as lowering your gcd.
The Third Method is based around the principle of Lower Uptime. The relationship between enhance and haste is that with increased uptime, Haste drastically becomes the overall best DPS stat. However, you will be peel, sit CC, slowed, disarmed, and forced to kill in small windows of time. Because of this, Crit becomes a viable stat ahead of Haste, increasing your chance for Large Ele Blast Crits, and other nature based attacks.

My Choice?
Following from Last season's method of gearing, I'll probably be sticking to The First or Third option, leaning more to the Third. The reason being is that I am just a huge fan of high expertise. I like going melee targets with high Parry as its often unexpected. This being said, I will likely stick with Option 3 and then build an off set with Option 1 once I hit the 27k Mark. This will also depend highly on the stats present on full gear. Will update as Season 15goes along.

Talents

Tier 1

Nature’s Guardian: This talent is similar to a warriors "Last Stand" ability as once your health drops below 30% your total health pool is increased by 25% for 10 seconds, and can happen ecery 30 seconds.. Since 5.2, the health you gain from this ability doesn't drop when your health pool returns to normal. So essentially its a permanent heal, passive, and off the gcd. Amazing ability, perfect defensive for shaman's most prone situation, during stuns.

Stone Bulwark Totem: You cast/summon an earth totem that places a damage absorption shield on the Shaman. This ability has the right idea and is similar to the old Stoneclaw totem bubble provided in expansions past. At the beginning of Season 14, this ability was not affected by battle fatigue, causing an amazing amount of damage absorption allowing it to be the most viable choice. Since that time, it has been fixed and with the recent increase to BF, this ability is further nerfed down the "Totem" pole.

Astral Shift: Put simply; it’s a shield wall ability that decreases incoming damage of all types by 40% for 6 seconds, on a 2 minute Cooldown. This is great to use during high periods of burst on you. The thing to remember is that it will decrease all the damage you receive after it is cast, i.e. if you have dots/bleeds on you already, the damage of those dots will not be decreased. Decent ability but way too long of a cd for too short of a duration.

My Choice?

Nature's Guardian. Nuff said.Tier 2

Frozen Power: This is a carryover from the enhancement tree before, that allows you to snare a target in an icy root whenever you frost shock them. *Remember, all your shocks share the same CD* Enhance doesn’t have all that much control these days, with our wind shear cd increased (needed to happen but still miss it) and no on demand stun, this root can be a lifesaver or a sure fire way to score a kill by sticking to the target.

Earthgrab Totem: Changes your earthbind Totem into a rehash of the old elemental ability that roots all enemies within 10 yards of the totem for 5 seconds. Really useful ability for hunter pets, stampede or melee cleaves with no freedoms.

Windwalk Totem: Summon an air totem that will grant freedom from snares/slows/roots for 6 seconds on you and any raid members within 40 yards. Really useful in any comp without a holy paladin. Can be used in any situation as mobility is hard to come by.

My Choice?

I swap between Frozen power and Windwalk Totem much of the time. I prefer Frozen power, as I am used to it as an old mechanic, however; Windwalk is a far greater group cd. Earthgrab Totem can be really useful when playing against melee cleaves, primarily when playing with a caster that doesn't have a lot of roots. Overall, Id say Windwalk>Frozen power> Earthgrab, bu all are useful in the right situation.

Call of the Elements: This ability is similar to a Mages Coldsnap, a Rogue’s Preperation, or a Hunter’s Readiness, in that it resets the cooldowns of certain abilities; in this case, shamans’ totems. The main thing to remember is that it resets only the totems with less than 3 minute cooldowns.

Totemic Persistance: A rehash and sort of filler talent that replaced Totemic Restoration. Allows for 2 of each type of totem to be out at once (I.e. Grounding and Windwalk.) Given that it restricts your ability to have wo ire types out at once, this talent is pretty lackluster and can only be beneficial in certain situations.

Totemic Projection: An ability that will move your totems to a different desired location. 10 second cooldown. This ability is useful to move Magma Totem s around to attempt to catch stealthies and knock them out, or to move Capacitor Totem to a healer as its about to explode to keep a CC chain going.

My Choice?

Call or Projection. Call of the elements can be a game-breaking talent when used correctly. Any time you keep your team out of CC it ads more pressure for you against your opponent. Resetting Tremor and or Windwalk can be hugely beneficial. A great talent overall, that I hadn't given enough attention to in the past. Projection, I simply like for throwing cap totems to my opponents for the group stun. I only use this against teams that fears wont be an issue and if my team isn't heavy on stuns.Tier 4

Elemental Mastery: Adds 30% ranged and melee haste, basically a mini Bloodlust. Lasts 20 seconds. This is an amazing cooldown, offering the same effect of a bloodlust but as a personal effect rather than a group one.
Ancestral Swiftness: An on use ability that will make any spell with a cast time, able to be cast instantly. This ability has a 1.5 minute cooldown and adds a passive 5% spell and 10% melee haste. With high uptime, haste becomes an absolutely amazing stat for enhance, making this talent very attractive. As well, there are times that you need an instant hex and don't have the procs, making this extremely ideal.

Echo of the Elements: When you heal or do damage with a spell (Lightning Bolt, Elemental Blast, Chain Lighting) this ability grants you an ability similar to Elemental Shaman’s Mastery, which grants you a chance to duplicate the spells effect. The healing portion is really the better part of this passive ability, as much of your instant casts are spent on healing or CC rather than straight damage.My Choice?

Ancestral Swiftness. Previously, Elemental Mastery was my preferred option, but; with the increase to haste on gear, and the damage buffs enhance has received, the passive haste increases your constant damage in an incredible way. 10% haste is a huge increase and really helps sustained pressure outside of your 3 minute cd. Now, Elemental mastery is not a bad option, but the haste is kind of overkill now during ascendance, and doesn't add nearly the pressure it did before, simply as the haste breaking point is exceeded easily when you unleash windfury, and have flurry procs. Lastly, if you're going for max damage during ascendance, it is semi-viable to go echo of the elements, in conjunction with elemental blast to get a double blast proc, along with stormblast, creating nearly unhealable damage....... if it procs.

Tier 5

Rushing Streams: A talent that allows your healing stream to affect two teammates at once rather than just one. An awesome talent that just doesnt fit the enhance playstyle. Enhance needs burst healing much of the time, otherwise this would be he way to go.

Ancestral Guidance: When you deal direct damage or healing, 40% of that amount is copied as healing and heals up to 3 nearby injured raid members, including you. If you are in a position where you need all of your self healing or group healing at once, you will achieve a higher amount if this is used in conjunction with healing stream. The drawback to this ability is that it requires you to be doing damage during those 10 seconds for it to actually be effective. Partner this cd with Ascendance for its fullest affect.

Conductivity: This talent is absolutely useless. It is intended to be a PvE ability for resto, but even there its near useless. The idea is that when doing damage with certain spells while in your healing rain it will heal your party members for a portion of the damage done. This ability is passive and is always up, but as I said, it has close to 0 uses in Arena. I had thought it could be useful in RBG’s but even then your healing would be better off used for direct healing.

My Choice?

Ancestral Guidance Healing Tide Totem went baseline and feels as if it heals for jack now. Ancestral Guidance healing paired with ascendance allows you to stay offensive and counter burst with your own very effectively. i.e. Ancestral Guidance.

Tier 6

Unleashed Fury: A passive ability that enhances (no pun intended) the effects of your Unleash Elements, depending on your applied Weapon Imbuements. In other words, you will gain an extra benefit from your Unleash Elements, depending on what you have currently, ex.) frostbrand gives a mini sprint.

Primal Elementalist: Passive ability that increases the strength, power, and abilities of your Earth and Fire Elementals. They become actual pets. The Fire elemental adds a damage buff on use while the Earth Elemental has a pet stun as well they both offer a passive increase to healing receive and decrease to damage taken. Basically transforms your Earth and Fire elementals into awesome badasses of awesomeness. Yes, I wrote that.

Elemental Blast: A spell of raw elemental damage on a 12 sec cd. After the spell is cast your agility, crit, mastery or Haste is increased by 3500 for 8 seconds. Through 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon this spell can be cast instantly. Your hardest hitting ability possible.

My Choice?

Ele Blast. Highest burst potential and really only way enhance stays viable in its current state. Enjoy the burst =).

Damaging Spells
Chain Lightning: A lightning attack that can be spread amongst multiple enemies, this does not have as much single target damage as Lightning Bolt and is used rarely in Arena. Can be cast instantly via 5 stacks of
Maelstrom Weapon.

Lightning Bolt: Single target lightning attack, most commonly used when damaging with 5 stacks of Maelstrom Weapon.

Unleash Elements: Releases the elemental energy from your current weapon imbuements and will change depending on what you have applied.

Frost Shock: Icy attack that causes the target to move at 50% less speed. Can be used to root enemies when specced into Frozen Power. 6 second CD that is shared with all other shocks.

Earth Shock: Instant cast damaging attack that leaves the “weakened blows” debuff, which reduces the physical damage done by the target by 10% for 30 seconds. Really effective against Hunters, Warriors, and Rogues, and not as but still decent against DK’s Pally’s and any other melee. 6 second CD that is shared with all other shocks.

Flame Shock: Instant fire attack that does initial fire damage, and leaves a dot on the Target. One thing to remember is that the Searing Totem A.I. works in conjunction with Flame Shock, or in other words, your flame shock target is the one that your Searing Totem will attack. 6 second CD that is shared with all other shocks.

Fire Nova: 4 Second CD, ignites your flame shock on every target currently suffering from it and emits an aoe damage attack. I.e. 5 people have Flame Shock on them, all 5 will pulse with this attack when cast. This is one of the few things I do know regarding Enhance in RBG’s, as it can be a really effective cleave attack.

Lava Lash: Offhand attack, HARDEST HITTER, in terms of attacks outside if cd’s. Damage is increased for every stack of Searing Flames (up to 5). Damage hits hardest with Flametongue imbued in the offhand. Via the 4-piece bonus provided by the PvP set, your Lava Lash hits as if it were imbued with Flametongue, when Frostbrand is applied. This attack spreads Flame Shock, allowing for high cleave damage when used in conjunction with Fire Nova.

Flurry: After dealing a melee critical strike your attack speed is increased by 15% for 15 seconds or 5 attacks, whichever comes first. You can gain 50% additional benefit from the haste you have on your items.
Searing Flames: Searing Totem adds a buff to the Shaman, up to 5 stacks. Increases the damage from Lava Lash.

Static Shock: When using Lava Lash, or Stormstrike, you have a 45% chance to deal damage equal to a Lightning Shield Orb.

Healing Spells

Healing Surge: Biggest single target heal enhance has. Through the Glyph of Healing Storm, this heal is increased per stack of Maelstrom Weapon. This is the most common spell we use with Maelstrom Weapon, as our healing utility is one of our best features.

Healing Rain: Aoe Heal, when not bursting, ccing, or healing heavy damage, this spell can be effective to use via the Maelstrom Weapon instant cast.

Cleanse Spirit: A decurse dispel. This one of the biggest reasons Enhance is so valuable, as we are one of the few classes that can dispel Hex or other curse effects. No real need to use this outside of getting rid of Hex.

All Other Spells

Ghost Wolf: Instantly transform into an ethereal wolf, increasing speed by 30%. If glyphed, it ensures you are unable to drop below 100% movement speed.

Bind Elemental: A CC that binds an elemental for a set amount of time. This can be very effective to cc a mages water elemental, though it is generally more effective to just kill them.

Purge: An offensive dispel, removing 1(2 when glyphed) beneficial magic effects from the target. This is by far one of our most amazing utility options. Use this to take off a pally’s bop, or big dps/healing cds. (ex. Icy Veins)

Maelstrom Weapon: When you deal damage with a melee weapon, you have a chance to gain a stack of Maelstrom Weapon, up to 5, decreasing the cast time and mana cost of your nature spells per stack. At 5 stacks, Hex, heals, and damaging spells become instant cast.

Water Shield: Adds an mp5 effect, or Mana per 5 secs. This is decent in duels, when kiting, attempting to keep mana up. In arena, your damaging attacks will return much more mana.

Wind Shear: An at range interrupt, 12 second cooldown, that locks the caster out of that school of spells for 3 seconds, if you successfully interrupt them.

Cooldowns

Ascendance: a 3 minute cooldown, transforming you into a being of pure elemental energy. For enhancement it transforms your Stormstrike into Stormblast, an attack of immense nature damage. As well, all your autoattacks hit from range and deal pure nature damage as well. This is by far your highest damaging cooldown.

Feral Spirit: a 2 minute Cooldown, summoning 2 spirit wolves that deal damage and heal for the damage done. In the past this was our big damage cooldown, and its been really dumbed down. Better used as a survival cooldown at times, but only effective as burst when used in conjunction with Stormlash Totem and Fire/Earth Elemental.

Shamanistic Rage: 1 minute cooldown, reduces all damage taken by 30%, and is able to be used while stunned. When glyphed, this ability will clear all magical debuffs on you, clearing HoJ, Deep Freeze, Frost Bomb, etc.

Spirit Walk: 1 minute cooldown, Removes all movement impairing effects but is not a freedom. As well, it increases movement speed by 60% for 15 seconds.

Spiritwalker’s Grace: 2 minute cooldown, allows the shaman to cast spells while moving for 15 seconds. Really useful if hexing or healing around a pillar, or used in duels/bgs to heal while kiting.

Bloodlust: The hallmark Shaman spell, increases melee/ranged/spell haste by 30% for 40 seconds. UNABLE TO BE USED IN RBGS OR ARENA AS OF 5.1

Hex: A curse/polymorph effect that transforms the target into a frog. This ability shares DR’s with Polymorph and Hunters Traps, most notably.

Totems

Air Totems

Capacitor Totem: a totem that acts as an aoe stun and emits the stun to all enemies within 8 yards after 5 seconds (3 if glyphed.)

Grounding Totem: A totem that catches incoming damaging spells. This includes cc, damage, etc. It will not catch aoe spells, but is most effective to be used when you expect a cc or high damage spell to be cast. i.e. when anticipating a mage’s opener out of stealth, dropping this can often catch a mages deep/frostbomb or even the shatter itself. Turning the opener over and flipping the match in your favor.

Stormlash Totem: Summons an Air Totem, granting lighting damage to you and your party/raid members. This totem is ridiculously amazing! It adds SO MUCH BURST. When using this, do your best to use it in conjunction with ascendance, or with wolves/elementals, to take full effect and use it to all of its potential.

Earth Totems

Earthbind Totem: an AOE slow ona 15 second cooldown. A decent totem for peels or when kiting.

Tremor Totem: a Fear/Sleep/Charm breaker on a 1 minute cooldown. Able to be used when suffering from these effects and lasts for 6 seconds.
Earth Elemental Totem: Summons an Earth Elemental, that can taunt pets. I haven’t been able to test this on psyfiend but I know this has been able to taunt a hunters stampede.

Fire Totems

Fire Elemental Totem: This elemental can do a significant amount of supplemental damage during burst phases. A change in MoP has allowed Fire Elemental’s to add Searing Stacks in the same way the Searing Totem does.

Magma Totem: This Totem is almost exclusively useful as a destealth ability. Used in conjunction with
Totemic Projection, this can be placed all around an arena map or anywhere else for that matter to attempt to catch an enemy sitting in stealth.

**Standard weapon imbuements should include Windfury mainhand, and Flametongue in the offhand.

Windfury Weapon-Should be imbued in the main hand weapon. When imbued, the shamans weapon has a 20% chance to trigger two extra attacks with even additional attack power. In other words, the class defining hard hitting weapon imbuement. =) Unleashed Fury allows your autoattacks a chance to trigger your static Chock talent, which normally procs off only Lava Lash and Stormstrike.

Flametongue Weapon- Adds a fire attack to your weapon as well it increases your lava lash damage if imbued in the off hand. Increases Spell Damage by 7%.

Frostbrand Weapon-. Adding an icy frost attack to each swing, this spell will put a constant slow on your target. Normally, when you unleash elements with frostbrand applied you slow the target an additional amount, but with Unleashed Fury; in addition to the slow, your movement speed is increased by 50% for 4 secs.

Earthliving Weapon-Dont use.

Rockbiter Weapon-Provides a static 5% damage reduction, useful in those dire situations where you need every single tool to survive in arena. By unleashing this with the Unleashed rage talent, you take an additional 40% reduced damage from the enemy TARGET. This means that whatever your target is when unleashing, you will take 40% less damage from, so be mindful. In arena I find this useful but otherwise unless Im flag carrying in a random BG, I rarely ever swap to it.

Glyphs

*in this section I will only cover glyphs that are relevant to Enhance and its performance, so no Minor glyphs. These are purely cosmetic and convenience based, so choose away.

Capacitor Totem-Reduces the charging time of your Capacitor Totem to 3 seconds from 5 seconds. If you are using Capacitor Totem often and missing use this. A recommended Glyph if you're team is dependent on Cap stun for a cc chain.

Feral Spirit-The ability Spirit Hunt, your feral Spirit’s heal is increased by 40%. A survival glyph, use if you are having a very hard time surviving when trained and use your feral spirits as a self heal. Not recommended most of the time.

Healing Storm-Increases the healing done by Healing Surge per stack of Maelstrom Weapon. I highly recommend this a necessary glyph that should never be switched out. Some enhance don't take this glyph an deal damage as a pure melee, but I play enhance as a hybrid and play the support role. So, choose to match your playstyle.

Hex-In expansions past this was a necessary glyph to maintain constant CC. This glyph is still very useful, primarily against teams that have no decurse.

Purge-Up until early Cata, Purge was able to offensively dispel 2 magical beneficial spells and was considered highly overpowered. Earlier in the expac this was brought back with no cost, now it adds a CD. Vanguards takes this glyph a lot of the time, but, I feel there are other glyphs hat take precedence. But hey, hes the mutli r1, not me =).

Shamanistic Rage-This glyph changes your Shammy rage into a defensive magic dispel. Gets rid of Hammer of Justice, Deep Freeze, Frostbomb, any magic debuff. Allows you to be very offensive and gets rid of harmful effects to add to survival. This is optional but HIGHLY recommended.

Spirit Walk-Reduces the cooldown of your Spirit Walk sprint. This is highly situational, it certainly isn’t as good as other Glyphs but can be useful against teams where you need max uptime which would usually be mages. Even in this situation the shamanistic rage glyph would more than likely give you more overall uptime.

Ghost Wolf-A rehash of the old talent system, grants the shaman to not be able to drop below 100% movement speed while in Ghost Wolf form. Only time I would worry about this glyph is in BG’s or 2’s. It’s amazing to use while kiting and can make a difference in those situations. Regardless its probably better to go with the most recommended Glyphs.

Flame Shock-Allows for 30% of the damage dealt by Flame shock to heal you. So, in other words, the initial damage dealt, 30% of that healed to you, and 30% of each tick healed back to you. So dotting multiple target(which should ideally be done already, will help you survive as those heals are coming back in. **I like this glyph for Ele much more than enhance, and really would only be used by enhance in niche comps.

Healing Stream-Offers 10% Fire frost and Nature damage reduction while healing stream is active. A pretty nice glyph, only use if casters are really giving you trouble as there are better glyphs overall.

Grounding Totem- With no Totemic restoration anymore, I would almost never think to take this glyph.

*This is not necessarily how you should lead off every encounter but is a decent guide as to what will be most effective in terms of maximizing damage output. In between these spells you will need to purge/heal/CC as well use totems/kite.

How to Burst

Diablous Posted a video that explains and shows this better than I could explain here.

This macro is used to heal and dispel your teammates without having to target them. I combine them to save macro and keybind space. You can separate these into 2 separate macros if you don’t like modifiers.

This next macro is my main arena CC macro. It operates the same way with modifiers; the only difference is when I use alt I focus that Arena Target. To use it for other Arena targets simply change the number to 2,3,4,5. I recommend only going to 3 as beyond that it gets a bit much to manage, but by all means feel free if it works for you.
#showtooltip
/cast [nomod, target=arena1] Hex
/cast [mod:shift, target=arena1] Frost Shock
/focus [mod:alt, target=arena1]
/cast [mod:ctrl, target=arena1] Wind Shear

The next 2 macros are stand by’s that Enhance has used for quite some time and can be used if you don’t like modifiers. I would recommend this for beginners while you’re still learning.

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus] Wind Shear

#showtooltip
/cast [target=focus] Hex

Keybinds

*The only reason I kept this in the guide is to reiterate that keybinds are completely personal, do what works for you. You should in no way feel pressured to copy anyones keybinds, be they glad or noob. The one lesson I will say is to familiarize yourself with modifers as they offer a lot of utility and aid in streamlining your keybinds.

Class Pairings

This was previously the viable enhance comp list, but as that changes so often, I will be listing your responsibilities/playstyle when playing with other classes.

**In any compostion of classes, Enhance's responsibilities will always include Constant purging of enemy buffs, dispelling hexes off teammates, off healing, and keeping interrupts up on CC/high damage spells.

DPS

Hunter- When playing with a hunter, you need to be mindful of a few things. One, being thatyour two main sources of CC (Trap and Hex) share Diminishing returns, meaning you have to be very careful when and why you use it on the same target. As well, you must do your best to cover the dispel of the hunter's traps, i.e. you are facing resto shaman/spriest/mage and you are killing the mage or priest. If the hunter traps the shaman, you must either cc the priest or save interrupt for Mass dispel, or vide versa if the priest is trapped you must hex the shaman so he can't dispel. Regarding burst, its usually best to let your hunter ride out enemy defensive cds and finish with ascendance after they are down.

Warrior-Warrior sustained damage is absolutely insane, so it is your job to keep the warrior as offensive as possible. This means constant purges on kill target to remove enemy buffs, constant off heals to keep them going, dispelling hex, wind walk totem, frostbrand slow on target, kicking poly's/fears/clones that are being used to peel, etc. Your damage during ascendance is insane and your sustained isn't bad at all, but your main focus while dealing damage is to keep your warrior as offensive as possible. This also means taking care of your healer, not overextending to force your healer into the open, so they can keep you both offensive. Popping cds in conjunction with your warrior can be effective but I prefer to use pets/stormlash with warrior cds and finishing with ascendance after.

Death Knight- Essentially the same treatment you would apply with warrior. Dk and enhance are ok with eachother but dk has very little peels for the enhance, making you a more trainable. That being said, the pressure you can achieve with a DK is pretty outstanding, so going ham pretty early isn't a bad option.

Rogue Rogue's can be very effective partners for enhance, especially in their ability to peel for you. As with most rogue comp's, the opener is very key, so going decently hard in the opener can turn the momentum in your favor rather quickly. Focus on cd's for kills as rogue constant damage is pretty low. Focus on pressuring through CC, fast and hard, force the enemy to make mistakes and capitalize.

WW Monk Monks have the tools to be a great partner for enhance, in their ability to peel, keep up constant pressure and CC, but; I feel that the synergy isn't there. This is at least in comparison to other classes. In a rush down sort of comp, the consistent CC from range from both dps could score early kills and monks are great anti-hunter partners. When playing with a monk I would go for 3% expertise and attempt a kill during a stun from the monk, just to add to your own consistent pressure. As a note, I might be bias in this as this has simply been my experience, because with all the tools available, they should be amazing partners for Enhance.

Shadow Priest-Shadow Priest, even after Life swap nerf is an amazing DPS partner for Enhance. When playing with a shadow priest, you have to be mindful that you can play much less aggressively than with most comps. With you and the spriest having consistent off heals you can ride out enemy cooldowns, force pressure through long cc chains and high sustained damage. Note that Spriests are generally train targets and your peels are limited in many ways, so you have to use your best peel (damage) to force the enemy defensive, or into making a mistake. So, in essence, with shadow priests, the games will be longer and you will be turtling much more often than not.

Warlock- In cata, and even earlier in MoP, locks made very effective partners for enhance. Warlock can still work, though there are better partners possible. When playing with a lock, I'd suggest Demo>Affliction>destro in terms of which spec to play with. Demo is much more viable than people give it credit for, and its sustained pressure is actually pretty insane, as well as its burst. Demo is also pretty difficult to kill. With Demo, you can pretty much go on any target, though I usually suggest Dps target while cross ccing. Focus on dispells and maintaining uptime on your kill target. With affliciton, you will be focused on spread pressure from the lock, and picking the most vulnerable target to swap to. Training one target is not advised, Dont follow targets that LoS as the longer a game goes, the more it falls into your favor. Wait out your enemy and force enemy cds through CC and swap once cd falls off. For destro its similar to Demo playstyle, but less effective.

2/4/2013-Updated information, clarified language used in multiple spots. Fixed spelling errors, updated in anticipation of 5.2 changes and resulting effects.**
3/11/2013-Updated abilities to 5.2, kept old information but provided comparison to new descriptions and interactions of abilities.
3/13/2013-Updated information regarding Glyph of Purge-Thnaks to Zairne for pointing it out =)
4/2/2013-Updated and added Glyph information

Thank you very much for this guide! This was really helpful and I think other beginner enh shamans will enjoy it as much as I am. The only things I can think of is 1) What addons fit well with enh playstyle (I have trouble spotting heals and cc cast from the opposing team for instance. One even bigger issue is to see the opposing teams off and def cds). 2) What is the role of enh against certain 3v3 comps (what is our main focus)?